Don’t let the fire go out!

Happy New Year! Well here we are with a brand new year ahead of us and we have the choice to make it a great year or an average year and the key ingredient in this is good old fashioned hard work. I don’t think there are any high achievers who have made it without a good dose of hard work.

The penny finally dropped with me about 2 years ago when I understood why I had moved jobs so many times in my life prior to running my own business for the past 4 years. My average life span for a job has been 3 years and I thought it was because I got bored but it wasn’t. It was because I had some inner voice statements going on in my head which weren’t helpful and to be honest I’m a bit ashamed of. I would secure a job and then I’d get stuck into the role and make a success of it. However after the first year I would say to myself “look at me aren’t I naturally talented. I’m so lucky to have these gifts.” I would then start to turn the effort down and maybe leave a little earlier and start a little later.

Before long my productivity would go down and my results reflected this. I would struggle on to improve things but an inner switch had been turned off and nothing I could do would switch it back on. If I had known all these years ago what I know now, I would never had allowed the switch to be turned off. So after around 3 years I would look for another job and secure it on the basis of the successful first year I had with the company- this cycle would continue throughout my career.

About 2 years ago I had a revelation where I finally understood why I had moved companies so many times. Because I am now coaching and training staff in motivation and mental resilience I conducted a great deal of research about high achievement in business, sport and music and found that the common factor in all of these is pure and simply Hard Work. Now of course natural talent comes into this but without the work ethic to make it work nothing will really happen.

I have applied this work ethic for the past two years to my business and the results have been outstanding. It’s no surprise that I have so much in the pipeline compared to last year and the year before. There is so much happening because I refuse to take my foot off the pedal and although I’m not working all the hours of the day, the hours I do work are used very effectively with a great time management system in place and great focus. I get everything I can out of each minute of the day working on the important things rather than the urgent.

2015 looks like it’s going to be a really good year but this won’t be just luck but good old fashioned hard work applied consistently and diligently. I’m very excited for the future and over the past two days I have been writing a chapter of my first book which will be in print by September 2015. The chapter I have been writing is on the Importance of sleep and the health benefits of getting enough and the detrimental effect to the body of not getting enough. It’s quite shocking to see what happens when you don’t get enough sleep and conversely how much you benefit from getting enough.

I’ll share more of this in future blogs but of course I won’t give all the information otherwise you won’t buy the signed copy of the book when it is published! So here we go into 2015 and how serious are you going to be about making it a success? So get stuck in and don’t take your foot off the pedal – don’t allow that switch to be turned off. If you do this you will see results that will astound you.

John